Had to replace a washer for the first time because my 12 year old washer had been getting more and more off-balanced and breaking itself to pieces with sections of the washer drum having broken off from the smashing and the lid having broken off and I had to do lots of small washes to keep it from getting off-balanced and dancing around sounding like an earthquake.
I have neighbors on both sides attached walls and I would get anxiety every time I did wash that it would go earthquake and my neighbors would come banging on my door wanting to kill me.
Searching for a washer was a huge pain. Every single washer there was had like 80% good reviews and 20% reviews complaining about them breaking fast and all kinds of nightmare leaks and noises. Ended up going for a top end one with the bells and whistles that seemed to have a higher percentage of good to bad reviews.
Plus a lot of negative reviews for the new HE washers just complain that HE is junk and doesn't wash the clothes as well as before since it's less aggressive and barely covers the clothes in water and just rubs the clothes against each other back and forth. Science seems to say this is rubbish and that it cleans normal stuff fine and is more gentle on clothing and the only downside are its bad for major stains so you need to pre-treat those bits first.
I got my new washer in yesterday, which was a hassle because it's on the 3rd floor of stairs. The hot/cold valves on top apparently have leaks and had to shut the water off for the house entirely and it still made a bit of a mess that had to towel up before putting the new one in.
First wash on the new one was fine. Regular load cold wash, yeah doesn't spin like crazy outside the final spin dry cycle. But probably fine. The Whirpool one I got has this weird load & go tray where you put like a month's worth of detergent in and it auto-figures out how much to disperse each load based on the load size it senses (aka more parts to fail over time). It's kind of weird because you can't tell how much detergent is actually going into the wash as opposed to normal washes when you do. Also this new HE style and HE concentration detergent you don't really see much soap spuds so it's hard to tell if it's cleaning. My stuff doesn't really get particularly dirty with stains so can't tell if it's washing well.
Then at night I did a heavy wash with my heavy bath mats and bathrobe and balanced them across each other. This is the kind of wash that would unbalance and break my old washer. I did a heavy wash which was like 90 mins and it went fine until the last 10 mins on the spin dry cycle where it spins like 850rpm which is really fast and with the heavyness it sounded like a fucking jet engine. It was vibrating heavy, but didn't move at all so could probably handle it, but at 10pm+ with attached walls and the washer being right on a wall and sounding like a jet earthquake...yeah that's still fucked even if it just does that for 10 mins for the spin cycle at the end.
So pretty bummed that after all that, the only thing I wanted was to be able to wash clothes without anxiety of pissing off my neighbors, and my $1,000 new washer on day 1 can't even do that
Also it's a smart washer where you can set things and track things on your phone with the Whirpool app. But I tried for like 20 mins and the bluetooth remote connection on the washer isn't working and connecting to my phone. Also Whirlpool has terrible troubleshooting for tech stuff. I've tried everything you can try, so I'm just going to assume the BT on the washer is not working. Not sure if it's worth the bother of sitting through customer service with Whirlpool and scheduling a tech to come out for a phone app I don't need and would probably never use.
I wish there was a way to turn the spin cycle down with heavy stuff so it's not spinning so fast since that's what causes the crazy vibration/earthquake. There is a spin MEDIUM setting as opposed to the FAST setting which everything other than delicate uses. Someone online complained that stuff is still soaking wet on medium in the reviews (fast gets stuff more dry than I've ever seen come out of a washer). I'll try doing a medium spin next time I do a heavy load and see how the noise is and how wet it ends up. I could always run it on spin only on fast manually and just let it go for 5 mins and then manually cancel it instead of 10 full minutes if I need to dry it more.
Otherwise will have to just stick to doing heavy loads with as few items as possible (just 1 bathrobe and 1 mat across from each other) and do them during the middle of the day when people have less reason to complain.
Still it's depressing and frustrating after spending all the time researching a new washer, getting it installed and all the money on it, to still have the same issue and anxiety.
Just another reason why I really want to buy a house this year. If I was in a standalone house and the washer was on one end of the house, as long as the washer isn't walking or breaking parts or leaking, if it's vibrating and loud as fuck for 10 mins during the final spin cycle, who cares. No one can hear it and it won't give me anxiety. Also maybe not being on the 3rd floor would lessen the vibration. The installer did balance it, but it might still be a little off, when I move to a new house I may get it re-balanced by a whirlpool tech as well as fixing the BT connection.
